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LINCOLN 

THE GREATEST MAN OF 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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LINCOLN 

THE GREATEST MAN OF 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 



BY 

CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN 

DEAN OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL, YALE UNIVERSITY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1922 

All rights reserved 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



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Copyright, 1922, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and printed. Published February, 1922, 



Press of 

J. J. Little & Ives Company 

New York, U. S. A. 



^ FEB -B 1922 
©CU654542 



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LINCOLN 

THE GREATEST MAN OF THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY 



YOU may possibly be interested in 
knowing how this study of a great 
man's life originally came about. 
When the new century was ushered in the 
event was celebrated in San Francisco 
at a large banquet for men at the Mer- 
chants' Club. The Committee of Ar- 
rangements provided four addresses on 
'The Achievements of the Nineteenth 
Century." Dr. David Starr Jordan, 
President of Stanford University, was 
asked to speak on 'The Greatest Scien- 
tific Discovery of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury." He very naturally named "The 
Principle of Organic Evolution" and de- 
5 



6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

voted his address to indicating the bear- 
ing of that principle upon scientific 
thought during the closing decades of the 
century. Professor Charles M. Gayley, 
the head of the English Department in 
the University of California, was asked to 
speak on "The Greatest Book of the Nine- 
teenth Century." He at once excluded all 
scientific works as not belonging to pure 
literature. After discussing the merits of 
various authors he named Goethe's 
"Faust" as the greatest literary produc- 
tion of the hundred years. Mr. Fairfax 
H. Whelan, a business man in San Fran- 
cisco, was asked to speak on "The Great- 
est Mechanical Invention of the Nine- 
teenth Century." He surprised us all — 
and no one knew in advance what choice 
any one of the four speakers had made. 
We expected something of an electrical 
nature, but he named "Bessemer Steel," 
the cheaper process of converting pig iron 
into steel, on the ground of its wider util- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 7 

ity. He maintained that the greatest in- 
vention was the one which served the in- 
terests of the largest number of people. I 
was asked to speak that evening on "The 
Greatest Man of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury"; and the after-dinner speech that 
night has by that same process of '^organic 
evolution" gradually shaped itself into the 
longer address contained in this little 
book. 

It might seem a futile task to seek 
to narne the greatest man in any century. 
It is not easy to compare one great man 
with another. And ''Comparisons are 
odorous," Dogberry said. His English 
was a trifle lame, but he had a show of 
facts on his side. Those earnest debates 
which we used to have thirty or forty 
years ago in the country lyceums as to 
which was the greater man, Columbus 
who discovered this country or Washing- 
ton who fathered it, did not really get us 
anywhere. They gave the young budding 



8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

orators a chance to get on their legs and 
try their powers, but the purpose of the 
discussion was defeated by the difficulty 
of reducing the various fractions of the 
total human achievement to a common dey 
nominator so that they might be com- 
pared. It is not easy to compare a great 
military commander with a man who is 
great in literature; or a great statesman 
with a great scientist. Yet straight in the 
face of all of these difficulties I am un- 
dertaking to name to you the greatest 
man of the Nineteenth Century and to 
justify my choice, if I may, at the bar of 
your own judgment. 

We live in an age of analysis and com- 
parison. The heavens declared the glory 
of God to our remote ancestors who knew 
very little about them except that they 
were beautiful. In these days we have 
learned to map out the paths the planets 
take. We know how to weigh accurately 
their huge bulk. We can measure the dis- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 9 

tances of those heavenly bodies from us 
and from each other. By our spectrum 
analysis we can even determine the very 
fuel they burn. And because of this more 
competent knowledge which we possess 
the heavens declare the glory of God to us 
yet more effectively. In like manner our 
appreciation of human excellence is 
heightened by the application of analysis 
and comparison to the essential elements 
in personal greatness. 

In entering upon this discussion I would 
offer these considerations as furnishing us 
a valid principle of selection. We may 
say that a great man is a man who makes 
some significant period of history different 
from what it would have been apparently 
but for his influence. Then when we 
come to measure the size of that section of 
history, the value of the interests involved 
and the permanence of the work accom- 
plished, we may readily determine the de- 
gree of his greatness. If in all those three 



10 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

regards he stands higher than any other 
man of his time, he may justly be re- 
garded as the greatest man of the period. 
Now we find in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury a certain historic event which in my 
judgment was the most significant and 
influential occurrence of the hundred 
years. I refer to the Civil War fought 
out here in our own land in 1861-65. You 
may measure that war any way you 
please — by the extent and value of the 
territory at stake; or by the number of 
men in the field, exceeding that of any 
modern war until the recent Great War 
in Europe; or by the conscientiousness 
and enlightenment of the opposing hosts 
— it was a war fought not by paid mer- 
cenaries, but by citizens who knew why 
they were there and for what they were 
fighting; or by the far-reach of the prin- 
ciples involved in their bearing upon the 
fate of a great nation threatened with dis- 
ruption, upon the interest of human free- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN ii 

dom and upon the cause of democracy 
touching as it does the development of 
the rank and file of the race — you may 
measure that war any way you please and 
I believe you will regard it as the most 
significant occurrence of the century. 

Now, in bringing the various issues in 
that war to a successful conclusion — in 
freeing four millions of our fellow-beings 
from slavery; in preserving a government 
which stands perhaps as the nearest ap- 
proach to a successful democracy on a 
large scale thus far in history; and in 
closing the debate upon certain questions 
which had troubled this Republic for dec- 
ades and now trouble it no more — in 
bringing those issues to a conclusion many 
great men wrought together and the credit 
for the outcome does not belong solely to 
any one man of the group. 

It was a gigantic task to bring a free, 
prosperous and resolute people, intelli- 
gently and conscientiously divided in their 



12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

political judgment, to submit to the will 
of the majority as expressed on the field 
of battle and then to go on together. To 
go on in what has proved to be not slum- 
bering hatred nor smoldering rebellion, 
but in actual, growing, joyous unity — it 
was a gigantic task! Seward and Chase 
and Stanton did their appointed work 
and they did it well. Grant and Sherman 
and Farragut accomplished their terrible 
task with thoroughness. Henry Ward 
Beecher, William Lloyd Garrison and 
Harriet Beecher Stowe, to each one of 
these belongs a place of honor! And to 
a great unnumbered host of plain men 
and women who fought and thought, who 
gave and prayed for the Union, to each 
one of these our gratitude is due! But 
to one man more than all the rest belongs 
the highest place in that struggle and I 
named him that night as the greatest man 
of the Nineteenth Century, the first mar- 
tyred President, Abraham Lincoln. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 13 

Now I hope that this choice did not 
proceed simply from the fact that I am 
an American myself and love my own 
country and its people as I could love 
no other. And I feel that I am a good 
deal of an American. My family has 
been here a long time. My ancestors 
landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. 
They had their trunks all unpacked and 
their household arrangements all in good 
running order when those Pilgrim Fathers 
finally got around in 1620. We were 
glad to see them when they came. They 
were good people and were destined to 
make an important contribution to the life 
of the Nation. But we were here first. 
And we have not been moving away 
nor dying out. I do not know how 
it may be with other family stocks, 
but I feel thoroughly sure that when 
Gabriel blows his trumpet, in every 
telephone book and city directory from 
Eastport, Maine, to San Diego, Califor- 



14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

nia, there will still be pages and pages of 
"Browns." 

I feel, therefore, that because I belong 
to a large family and to a family which 
has been here a long time, I am a good 
deal of an American. But nothing 
splendidly human is ever foreign to any 
lover of his race. I have tried to 
study the work of great men in other 
lands. 

I hope the choice of Lincoln did not 
spring simply from the fact that he 
wrought with certain issues which interest 
my own mind and heart more than other 
issues might. I have tried to study the 
work of great men in other fields of en- 
deavor. From that excursion into other 
lands and other lines of effort I came back 
all the more firmly persuaded that the 
highest place of honor in the Nineteenth 
Century belongs to that President of the 
United States. 

The very title was his in a distinctive 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 15 

way. No man before his time had ever 
been ''President of the United States" in 
the sense that Lincoln was, nor has any 
man been since. ''United States" they 
were up to i860! "United States" they 
were in his determined and insistent mind 
during all those troubled years of '61-5, 
for he maintained that the Southern States 
had not gone out of the Union and that 
they could not by any act of theirs go out. 
And "United States" they are to-day, 
thanks to him and to those who wrought 
with him — "United" as we trust for all 
time! He was, in a very distinctive way, 
President of the United States. 

Now, before I enter upon the discussion 
of what I regard as the four main ele- 
ments in Lincoln's greatness, it may be 
profitable to recall some of the difficulties 
which confronted him at the beginning of 
his administration. In my judgment no 
President from the immortal Washington 
down to Woodrow Wilson has ever been 



i6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

confronted by a crisis more grave. Take 
into consideration these six important 
facts ! 

1. He found an empty treasury, the 
public credit sadly impaired by the seces- 
sion of eleven prosperous States, and he 
had upon his hands one of the costliest 
wars of modern times to be fought through 
and paid for in honest money. 

2. He found himself at the head of an 
inexperienced party. The Republican 
Party or the Whig Party had been out of 
power. The Democratic Party had been 
in control of the National Government. 
It is one thing to stand off and criticize 
and find fault with the manner in which 
some other party or some other man is 
doing a certain thing. Almost anyone can 
criticize the other fellow, whether the per- 
formance is making a speech, or running 
a newspaper, or poking the fire. But to 
get in and do the thing better than the 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 17 

other man was doing it is quite another 
matter. The Republican Party suddenly 
found itself taken out of the attitude of 
opposition and criticism to be placed in 
the responsible control of the National 
Government at a great crisis in our his- 
tory. And it was for the most part with- 
out experience. 

3. Lincoln found himself supported or 
burdened, according to one^s point of 
view, by a set of counselors in his Cab- 
inet who were all suspicious of his ability. 
His Secretaries felt at the outset that Lin- 
coln did not know enough to be President 
of the United States. They said that he 
was "a raw western man" who had come 
East. They insisted that his manners 
were awkward and that his clothes did not 
fit him. They maintained that he told 
too many stories and cracked too many 
jokes for a man in public life. And they 
were all profoundly sure at the start that 
he would be humbly grateful to them if 



i8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

they would only tell him what to do. If 
Lincoln had not been so genuinely great 
he would have been advised to death in 
the first year of his administration. 

4. He found the public opinion of 
Europe on the whole unfriendly to the 
North. The European bankers were hesi- 
tating over our bonds and the European 
governments, many of them, were on the 
very edge of acknowledging the Southern 
Confederacy as a sovereign nation. There 
seemed to be an ill-disguised feeling of 
satisfaction over what they regarded as 
"the collapse of the American experiment 
in popular government." Even in Eng- 
land, our long-time friend, up to the day 
when Henry Ward Beecher went abroad 
to give his great addresses in Manchester 
and Birmingham, in Liverpool and Lon- 
don, the general feeling was more friendly 
to the South than to the North. The Eng- 
lish aristocracy sympathized with the aris- 
tocrats of the South. The cotton opera- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 19 

tives in Manchester were angry because 
the supply of raw cotton had been cut 
off by our blockading the southern ports. 
The prevailing temper of Europe was hos- 
tile to the Union. 

5. He found here at the North a pow- 
erful, influential section of the people who 
were thoroughly despondent. They were 
tired of the debate and the struggle over 
slavery and states' rights. They said, 'Tf 
those southern states do not want to stay 
in the Union, let them take their slaves 
and go out, rather than fight about it. Let 
us have peace." The confusion and dis- 
couragement in the northern mind was a 
serious obstacle in Lincoln's pathway. 

6. He found a powerful, resolute sec- 
tion of the Union up in armed revolt 
against the government which he had 
sworn to protect and to preserve. 

Now, take those six facts together — 
the empty treasury, the inexperienced 



20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

party, the distrustful cabinet, the un- 
friendliness in Europe, the despondency 
in the North, and the armed rebellion at 
the South — they present a combination of 
difficulties sufficiently grave to test the 
title to greatness of any man who might 
be called upon to meet them. 

Now, with those facts clearly in mind, 
let me name what I would regard as the 
four main elements in Lincoln's great- 
ness. 

First, his combination of lofty idealism 
with practical sagacity in bringing things 
to pass. He had his ideals. They hung 
in his sky as definite and as illuminating 
as the visions of a seer. The abolition 
of slavery, the preservation of the Union, 
the healing of the breach between the 
North and the South, the welfare of the 
entire American people! Toward those 
ideals he steadfastly set his face. But he 
was always a concrete rather than an ab- 
stract idealist. He had a way of seeing 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 21 

what ought to be and of seeing how it 
could be. Then he showed himself able 
to get in and do it. This combination 
of lofty idealism which gave him the moral 
passion of a saint or a reformer, together 
with the well-seasoned sagacity of a prac- 
ticed diplomat, made him a statesman of 
the first order. 

He was a great man and he was a good 
man. If we were starting out to canonize 
some of our American Protestant saints 
I should be in favor of beginning with 
Abraham Lincoln. But his goodness was 
always of the homely, useful type. It was 
not the abstract, doctrinaire, John the 
Baptist sort of goodness which demands 
for its exercise that it be taken off into 
the desert to live on locusts and wild 
honey without wife or child, without citi- 
zenship or business connection or any of 
the normal relationships of life. Like the 
Son of Man, Abraham Lincoln "came eat- 
ing and drinking." He came building his 



22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

high ideals into an e very-day order of 
plain fact. 

He was just as desirous as Emerson 
ever was of hitching his wagon to a star. 
His Gettysburg Address and his Second 
Inaugural, classics they are in political ut- 
terance, show that he could hitch his 
wagon nowhere else than to the highest 
star in sight. But he was always willing 
to have all four wheels of the wagon on 
the ground. He was ready to get down 
and grease the axles so that his own par- 
ticular wagon-load of effort might run 
with the least possible friction. He was 
there encouraging the team by such home- 
ly words of cheer as made him one of the 
plainest of men. He was, throughout his 
illustrious career, a concrete idealist. 

He was accustomed to say to his cab- 
inet, ^'The question, gentlemen, is not, 
^Can anyone imagine anything better than 
this?^ I have no doubt but that any one 
of you can. The question before us is, 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 23 

'Can we do anything better at this time?' " 
The ideal, as he saw it, must be a prac- 
ticable, a feasible ideal. He was never 
disposed to sit down and cry for the moon. 
He wrought in the spirit of his own 
century's greatest poet. You will remem- 
ber how Browning puts it: 

"The common problem, yours, mine, 

everyone's. 
Is not to fancy what were fair in life 
Provided it could be, but finding first what 

may be 
Then find how to make that fair, up to 



This quality of genius, not dwelling 
apart in the isolation of seeing visions and 
of dreaming dreams, but engaged steadily 
in the accomplishment of certain useful 
ends, seems to me to rank Lincoln above 
all such men as Darwin, Spencer, Emer- 
son, Goethe. These men were free to go 



24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

into their studies or their laboratories 
or into the fields to think and observe, to 
study and to write as they chose. There 
was no hurry. The ''Origin of Species'^ 
did not have to be issued by a certain day. 
The fine chapters in "The Conduct of 
Life/' or the noblest passages of 'Taust," 
were not suddenly called out by a hostile, 
insistent line of bayonets. 

But upon Lincoln during all the years 
of his public career there rested the pres- 
sure of the necessity for the immediate 
accomplishment of certain definite ends. 
The war must be carried along, with 
money, millions of it, and with hundreds 
of thousands of men. The men and the 
money must be forthcoming without de- 
lay. The men had to be fed, clothed, 
armed, transported, and made effective in 
the field. The public opinion of Europe 
must either be changed or held back un- 
til we had settled our difficulties here at 
home. The public opinion of this coun- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 25 

try, flickering like a candle in the wind, 
now blazing up into some promise of use- 
fulness and now threatening to go out all 
together, must be fed and sustained and 
thus made equal to the terrible demands 
which were being made upon it. 

Now to meet successfully a situation 
like that would seem to be a harder task 
than to write a book, or to announce an 
idea, or to sing a song. And the com- 
bination of administrative with intellec- 
tual ability in Lincoln may well serve to 
give him a higher place in the world's 
esteem than that held by any of the great 
men whose names I have mentioned, 
above. 

I referred in passing to the difficulties 
confronting him at the beginning of his 
administration. It is enough to say, in 
a word, that he met and mastered them 
all. He did it not by a few shrewd ex- 
ploits which would put the enemy of our 
country's peace in a hole, only to come 



26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

out again all the more determined because 
of that temporary check in his plans. He 
did it by years of patient, far-seeing 
statesmanlike effort which laid the foun- 
dation for converting the enemy of our 
country's peace into an abiding and an 
essential friend. 

Before Lincoln died he had the joy of 
seeing the slaves all freed by his Emanci- 
pation Proclamation. He saw the Union 
preserved without the loss of a single 
state. He saw the armed rebellion brought 
practically to an end. He saw the great 
volunteer armies of Grant and Sherman 
ready to be mustered out and to be re- 
turned to their homes and to peaceful 
industry. And he must have known that 
to this magnificent result he, more than 
any other one man, had contributed. 

It had told tremendously upon his 
strength; body, brain and heart had all 
been taxed to the utmost. If we were to 
measure his term in the White House, not 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 27 

by the lapse of days, but by the con- 
sumption of vitaHty, it would be drawn 
out into a considerable portion of the al- 
lotted three score years and ten. And I 
feel confident that I am correct in assert- 
ing that the assassin's bullet only antici- 
pated an event which would not have been 
long postponed when once the reaction 
from the terrible stress of war times had 
set in. 

And if Lincoln could have looked ahead 
and could have foreseen the speedy end 
of his career, he might have said, as did 
the prophet of old, ^'It is enough! Now 
let thy servant depart in peace, for mine 
eyes have seen the salvation of my people 
Israel." His great ideals had all become 
accomplished facts. I would name, there- 
fore, as the first element in his greatness 
the combination of lofty idealism with 
practical sagacityin bringing things to pass. 

The second element I would name 



28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

would be his power of comprehending men 
of extreme views. It was Frederick W. 
Robertson who used to maintain that the 
truth, as a rule, does not lie with either 
extreme. Nor does it lie (as many soft- 
hearted and soft-headed people like to 
think) with the golden mean, the half- 
way position, the compromise which 
misses the strength of both extremes. The 
truth, Robertson maintained, lies rather 
in the recognition of certain deeper un- 
derlying principles which make possible 
the strength of both the extremes. 

Now in that quality of insight Abraham 
Lincoln was a past master. He had come 
into prominence chiefly by his anti-slavery 
speeches in the Douglas debates. He had 
been elected to the Presidency by the 
votes of tens of thousands of men who 
knew very little about him, except that 
he was a man who hated slavery. But 
the moment he was elected he refused to 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 29 

be regarded as the advance agent or the 
general manager of the abolition move- 
ment. He refused to wear the tag of any 
section or of any party or of any par- 
ticular school of political opinion. He 
insisted that now he was President of the 
whole United States, North and South, 
loyal and rebellious, bond and free. He 
was their President and he was there to 
serve their interests as best he might. 

He was roundly scolded for taking this 
broad view of the matter by the extrem- 
ists of both types. Wendell Phillips, a 
finished Harvard scholar, a polished Bos- 
ton gentleman, a wonderful orator — in 
my judgment almost the finest we have 
produced in this land — but a man sin- 
gularly defective in good judgment, 
scolded away at Lincoln in most abusive 
fashion. He called him "a mere huck- 
ster in politics." He called him "the 
slave-hound from Illinois" because in the 



30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

early years of his administration Lincoln 
allowed fugitive slaves to be returned to 
their masters in the border states. 

And Horace Greeley, an earnest, warm- 
hearted, forcible, blundering man up to 
the day of his death, scolded away at Lin- 
coln in the columns of the New York 
Tribune, making that paper a great hin- 
drance when it could have been a mighty 
help. The New York Tribune at that 
time was the political Four Gospels, and 
Acts, and Epistles all bound into one, for 
a great many people here at the North. 
The old farmer out here at the Four Cor- 
ners did not know exactly what he did 
think about things until he got his ' Veekly 
Trybune!' as he called it, and sat down 
to read what Horace Greeley had to say 
about it all. 

Lincoln listened to them all and was 
unmoved by them all. He also had the 
abolition of slavery a good deal at heart, 
but he also had a responsibility which 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 31 

those gentleman did not share, and which 
they were not always able to see. He 
had the Emancipation Proclamation in his 
heart a long, long time before his wise 
head approved its issuance or before his 
right hand wrote it out in firm lines. He 
knew that its hour had not yet come and 
so he calmly waited for the fullness of 
time. 

Away over at the other extreme in those 
days were the War Democrats and other 
men of their way of thinking. They be- 
lieved in the Union, but they had no 
money to spend and no blood to spill in 
freeing slaves. They insisted that Lincoln 
was saying altogether too much about 
abolition and was moving altogether too 
fast in that direction. Their scolding was 
ofttimes only second to that of the extreme 
abolitionists like Wendell Phillips and 
Horace Greeley. 

It is rather trying to human flesh to be 
censured at one and the same time for 



32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

being "ultra" and '^radical," and for be- 
ing "lukewarm" and "hesitating." It is 
as confusing as the conduct of those peo- 
ple in the New Testament of whom it is 
said, "We piped unto you and ye did not 
dance. We wailed unto you and ye did 
not mourn." It required a good deal of 
insight in those days to know what kind 
of music would bring all the loyal people 
of this country into line. It stands to the 
undying credit of Abraham Lincoln that 
he knew. He comprehended men of ex- 
treme views and in the end was able to 
draw them together and utilize them by 
keeping to the front the deeper underlying 
principles. 

He knew that the underlying principle 
in that great struggle was the preserva- 
tion of the Union, the maintenance of the 
integrity of our country. He was accus- 
tomed to say, "If I could save the Union 
by freeing all of the slaves, I would do 
that. If I could save the Union without 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 33 

freeing any of the slaves, I would do that. 
If I could save the Union by freeing part 
of the slaves and leaving the rest alone, I 
would do that. What I do, I do because 
I believe it serves the cause of the Union. 
And what I leave undone, I leave undone 
because I believe that serves the cause of 
the Union.'' 

He knew full well that the Union would 
not "continue to exist half -slave and half- 
free." But he knew also that the only 
principle upon which he could draw to- 
gether those men of extreme views was the 
preservation of the Union, the mainte- 
nance of the integrity of our common 
country. 

There are people in every community 
who can see the flies on a barn door with- 
out ever seeing the barn door. Certain 
lively, buzzing details out in the fore- 
ground take up their entire attention and 
they miss the main fact. Lincoln could 
always see the barn door! He could see 



34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the main fact in any situation! He could 
recognize the deeper underlying principles 
which were at stake and when he saw 
them he anchored to them. 

The wisdom of his course is perfectly 
apparent to us now. It began to be ap- 
parent in the later years of the Civil War. 
In the Republican Convention of 1864, 
which renominated Lincoln, they very 
shrewdly put in as temporary Chairman, 
Mr. Robert C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky. 
He was a Southerner. He was an orator 
of the old school. He was an aristocrat 
and his social affihations were almost en- 
tirely with the slaveholders. But he be- 
lieved in the Union and because of that 
faith he was there at that Convention. 

On taking the Chair he said, "Gentle- 
men of the Convention, as a Whig Party, 
or a Republican Party, or an Abolition 
Party, or an American Party, I would not 
go with you one step. But as a Union 
Party, I will go with you, if need be, to 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 35 

the ends of the earth or to the gates of 
death." And he represented a very con- 
siderable element in this country at that 
time who were ready to go all lengths in 
the preservation of the Union. 

Lincoln labored steadily to keep before 
the minds of the people the idea that the 
Southern States had not in any sense sev- 
ered their connection with the Union. 
General McClellan reported to him on one 
occasion that in blocking the way so that 
the army of Northern Virginia could not 
make any aggressive effort at that time 
he had, ''made safe Pennsylvania and 
Maryland and all our soil.'^ General 
Meade, after the victory at Gettysburg, 
delayed action and allowed Lee to get 
back safely across the Potomac. He then 
telegraphed to the President that at least 
"he had driven the invader from our soil." 

"Our soil ! " exclaimed Lincoln. "When 
will our Generals ever get that idea out of 
their heads! The whole country is our 



36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

soiL" His great main interest was in keep- 
ing to the front that fundamental prin- 
ciple in the struggle which was being made 
to preserve the integrity of the Nation. 

There was another political convention 
held that same year in Cleveland, Ohio. 
It was made up of those who desired to 
nominate some northern man who would 
be able to defeat Lincoln at the polls. It 
was a mixed assemblage. The John C. 
Fremont men were all there. The Peace- 
at-any-price Party was well represented. 
The German radicals from St. Louis, un- 
der the leadership of B. Gratz Brown, 
were on hand. The Convention made a 
great deal of noise and the Democratic 
papers of the time affected to treat it with 
the utmost seriousness and dignity. 

The delegates had a great deal to say 
about ''the tyrant Lincoln. '^ They de- 
nounced him for his unconstitutional acts. 
They adopted a good many strenuous 
resolutions. During the Convention this 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 37 

resolution was introduced, — "Resolved, 
That we insist upon putting down the Re- 
bellion at once." One pious delegate 
moved to amend it by inserting these 
words, "with God's assistance." This, 
however, was voted down with boisterous 
demonstrations of disapproval. They 
wanted no help from any quarter whatso- 
ever. Then, after having denounced Lin- 
coln repeatedly for being unconstitutional, 
they proceeded to nominate for President 
John C. Fremont and for Vice-President 
a man who came from the same state, ap- 
parently forgetting that the Constitution 
of the United States expressly prohibits 
the electors of any state from casting their 
votes for a President and a Vice-Presi- 
dent, both of whom shall come from the 
same state as themselves. Then having 
done this unconstitutional thing they ad- 
journed. 

The people saw at once the futility of it 
all. Fremoiit had the good sense to with- 



38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

draw his name. And very speedily the 
whole force of the opposition there ex- 
pressed faded out. But if Lincoln had 
allowed himself to be side-tracked by 
some minor issue; if he had anchored to 
anything less than the great main fact in 
that heart-breaking struggle, his first four 
years in the White House might have re- 
sulted in failure. He might not have been 
renominated or reelected in 1864. And 
the whole history of our country for the 
last fifty years might have been a story 
of tragic disappointment. 

His political sagacity had in it the qual- 
ity of the X-ray. He could see all the 
way in and all the way through, and all 
the way down. Deep underneath the ruf- 
fling and the millinery which rested upon 
the surface of society in those days; deep 
within the warm throbbing flesh of popu- 
lar feeling, he saw the solid backbone, the 
skeleton of political principle which alone 
would hold the Republic upright. And 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 39 

with that he cast in his lot. I would name, 
therefore, as the second element in his 
greatness his power of comprehending and 
in the end of utilizing men of extreme 
views by keeping to the front the deeper 
underlying principles. 

The third element I would name would 
be his ability to keep close to the hearts 
of the people in sympathetic fashion and 
yet lead them steadily in those lines of ac- 
tion which he desired them to take. It 
was James Russell Lowell, in his essay on 
Lincoln, who said that there was "a cer- 
tain tone of familiar dignity, a kind of 
fireside plainness" about the man not only 
in his conversation and in his speeches but 
even in his state papers. He did not have 
the air of a man who was laying down the 
law to the country. He showed, rather, 
the attitude of one who was taking the 
whole country into his confidence and 
talking matters over with it as one neigh- 



40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

bor might discuss the questions of the day 
over the back fence with his neighbor. 
His word was ever ''Come, now, let us 
reason together about this matter." 

He respected the people too much to 
bully them. He respected the people too 
much to flatter them. There was in him 
nothing of the demagogue. He reasoned 
with them in serious fashion and in con- 
fident expectation that the same considera- 
tions which had persuaded his mind would 
persuade theirs. In that way he gathered 
to himself their consent and approval. 
On the day that he died I suppose he was 
the most absolute ruler in Christendom. 
Never a Czar of all the Russias had such 
power over his people as Abraham Lin- 
coln had over the loyal people of this 
land. 

Now that is leadership of the highest 
type. The finest quality of leadership, 
whether it be in ward politics, or in a 
Woman's Club, or in a baseball nine, is 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 41 

not the leadership which goes about fussy 
and bossy insisting constantly on having 
its own way. It is the leadership which 
offers its suggestions and policies so quiet- 
ly, unobtrusively, and winsomely that the 
people accept them and act upon them 
without realizing that they are being led. 
They see the whole matter so clearly that 
they feel as if they were merely following 
the wise dictates of their own judgment. 

Napoleon Bonaparte was a great leader 
of men, but he depended for his power of 
leadership upon his personal magnetism, 
upon the brute strength of his own dom- 
inant will, and upon a rapid succession of 
victories. When the victories ceased, his 
power of leadership was gone. Lincoln 
knew that in a democracy public senti- 
ment would rule. He knew also that pub- 
lic sentiment to be reliable must be in- 
formed and persuaded. He, therefore, 
proceeded in that cautious, sure-footed 
way which was characteristic of him. He 



42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

was like a pillar of cloud by day and of 
fire by night. He was never in such a 
hurry as to run off and get out of sight 
of his Israelites. He did not, on the other 
hand, allow them to lag back. He kept 
himself in sympathetic relations with the 
people, but kept them moving steadily 
toward the goal he had in view. 

The influence of this habit of mind had 
even penetrated the South. The fact that 
Lincoln was not the agent of any par- 
ticular party or section, but the President 
of the whole United States, had come to 
be felt all over the land. A certain appre- 
ciation of his justice, fairness, wisdom and 
mercy had begun to weaken the morale of 
General Lee's army long before it reached 
Appomattox. 

In the Fall of 1864 the southern sol- 
diers in the trenches around Richmond 
and Petersburg heard cheering over in the 
northern lines. They knew what the 
Union soldiers were cheering about — they 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 43 

knew that they were cheering over the re- 
election of Abraham Lincoln. And they 
knew also that this meant the speedy 
downfall of the Confederacy. The lead- 
ers were still defiant but the common peo- 
ple were making ready to give up the un- 
profitable struggle. Their mood was re- 
flected in the price of Confederate money. 
During the war it had taken thirty-five 
dollars of Confederate paper to purchase 
a dollar in gold. After the reelection of 
Lincoln it took fifty, then sixty, then sev- 
enty, and then nobody wanted it. This 
registered the sober judgment of the busi- 
ness men of the South as to the effect of 
the reelection of Lincoln upon the fate of 
the Confederacy. 

His leadership was much less showy 
and dramatic than the movements of Na- 
poleon, but wherever Lincoln went he took 
the country with him. When he died the 
soul of the movement to which he had 
given his life went marching on. It had 



44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

already become incarnate in that whole 
body of political sentiment and conviction 
which now ruled the North. 

His successful maintenance of this sym- 
pathetic touch with the people was due, 
in large measure, to these three qualities: 
His integrity, high and holy enough for 
all its tasks, yet sufficiently simple to walk 
upon the ground! His common sense! 
We call it ^'common," I do not know why; 
it is anything but common. I mean the 
plain straightforward way of looking at 
things and of saying things. When Lin- 
coln talked, the people knew exactly what 
he was driving at. They did not have to 
have an English translation of it. He 
never used those long words which would 
not go into a suitcase without being folded 
twice. He used the short, terse, expres- 
sive words of the King James Bible and 
of Shakespeare, the two volumes which he 
read most. He was a man of great com- 
mon sense. And in the third place, his 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 45 

sense of humor, of which he had a 
very abundant store! It sometimes be- 
came a source of irritation to serious- 
minded men like Seward and Stanton in 
the stress of war times. It was one of the 
ways in which Lincoln sought a momen- 
tary relief from the severe mental strain 
of his high office. 

There is something about the psy- 
chology of an average American which 
warms up to a combination like that. 
Give a man integrity, common sense, and 
a sense of humor, and he has in him the 
main essentials necessary for leadership. 

This combination enabled Lincoln to 
put things in a terse, meaty, sententious 
way which the common people would hear 
gladly and carry away readily in their 
minds. I will venture to recall a few strik- 
ing instances of this quality of mind. 

During the years preceding the Civil 
War much was said about "the natural 
inferiority of the colored race." The peo- 



46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

pie were also sensitive about the idea of 
"negro equality'' and the possibility of 
intermarriage between the negroes and 
the whites. A very common way to chal- 
lenge the position of an abolitionist in 
New England was to say to him, ''How 
would you like to have a negro woman for 
your wife? How would you like to have 
a negro marry your daughter?" In the 
famous Illinois debates Stephen A. Doug- 
las had harped upon the natural and per- 
manent inferiority of the colored race. 

At one of their meetings Lincoln replied 
to these arguments against abolition in 
these words: ''I agree with my friend 
Judge Douglas that the negro is not in all 
respects my equal — certainly not in color 
and perhaps not at this time in intellec- 
tual or in moral endowment. But in his 
right to eat the bread which his own 
right hand earns without asking the leave 
of any other man, he is my equal and the 
equal of Judge Douglas and the equal of 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 47 

every living man. As to intermarriage, 
I do not understand that because I do not 
want a negro woman for a slave, I must 
necessarily want her for a wife. My un- 
derstanding is that I can just let her alone. 
And I have no fears that I or that any of 
my friends would marry negro women 
even though there was no law to prevent 
it. But as Judge Douglas and his friends 
seem to have apprehensions that they 
might, I give him my word that I will 
stand to the last by the law of the State 
of IlHnois which forbids the marriage of 
blacks and whites." These words were 
widely quoted in the North and after that 
we did not hear so much about the nat- 
ural inferiority of the colored race, or 
about the possible social consequences of 
abolition. 

The same quality of mind appeared in 
his treatment of the Mason and Slidell 
Affair. You will remember that Mason 
and SHdell, two Southern gentlemen on 



48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

their way to Europe, were forcibly taken 
from the British ship Trent by one of 
our northern cruisers. Great Britain in- 
sisted that her rights as a neutral had been 
invaded and demanded that the men 
should be given up. This was done and 
it was altogether right. But the people 
were sensitive and many felt that Great 
Britain had taken advantage of our un- 
happy civil strife to inflict upon this coun- 
try an open insult. 

When Lincoln came to a certain 
Cabinet meeting he found his Secretaries 
angrily discussing the incident. They 
were in a mood to make an immediate de- 
mand upon Great Britain for reparation 
or at least for an apology. If this should 
not be forthcoming, they insisted that war 
should be declared upon England at once. 
Lincoln listened to the discussion for a 
time and then remarked quietly, ^'Gentle- 
men, doesn't it seem to you that one war 
at a time is enough?'' One war at a time! 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 49 

This was the headline in all the morning 
papers at the North next day and it did 
more to cool the country off and to bring 
it to its senses than a state document as 
long as the book of Jeremiah would have 
done. The people decided that "one war 
at a time" was quite enough — and that 
was the last of that incident. 

The President used great tact through- 
out in keeping the border states, Mary- 
land, Kentucky, and Missouri, in the 
Union. Their sympathies, in large part, 
were with the South, but it was much 
easier to bring the struggle to a success- 
ful conclusion with those three states in 
the Union than it would have been had 
they joined the Confederacy. Now and 
then their slaves ran off and the question 
of returning or of not returning fugitive 
slaves to their masters held tremendous 
possibilities of trouble. Lincoln once re- 
plied to an angry inquiry, touching some 
fugitive slaves who had escaped across the 



50 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

border, in these homely words: ''You peo- 
ple are slowly finding out that two-legged 
property is a very poor sort of property 
to own." 

In the early days of the war the in- 
activity of General McClellan became a 
thorn in the flesh for all zealous Northern- 
ers. He was in command of the Army 
of the Potomac. He was a splendid drill 
master, a fine disciplinarian. He took 
good care of his men and improved the 
morale of the army from month to month. 
But he was forever calling for "more 
troops" and was not doing anything ag- 
gressive. "All quiet on the Potomac" — 
this was the report Which came back 
and kept on coming back, until the peo- 
ple were thoroughly sick of it. It was not 
"quiet on the Potomac" which they de- 
sired. They had sent their husbands and 
their sons, their brothers and their lovers 
to the front and they desired to hear about 
some decisive action against the army of 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 51 

General Robert E. Lee in northern Vir- 
ginia. 

The patience of Lincoln was finally ex- 
hausted — and I suppose since the time 
of Job he might be written down as the 
most patient man in history. He sent 
out in very informal fashion this mes- 
sage to General McClellan: ''If General 
McClellan is not going to use the Army 
of the Potomac for a while, I would like 
to borrow it for a day or two and see 
what I could do with it." This was not 
exactly a plan of campaign or an official 
order from the Commander-in-chief of the 
Northern Forces, but it was a very sug- 
gestive message, very stimulating. And 
from that time on General McClellan 
found it in his heart to do something more 
aggressive against the army of Lee. 

I will only relate one more — I have 
never seen this story in print. I would 
not undertake to say that it has not ap- 
peared in some form, because so many 



52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Lincoln stories are printed every year 
during the month of February in the 
newspapers and in the magazines of the 
country. I have read nearly all of the 
"Lives of Lincoln" which have appeared 
in book form and I have never seen this 
story published. 

It was my good fortune once to make 
a long sea- voyage on the same vessel with 
Mr. Frederick W. Seward. He was the 
son. of William H. Seward, our Secretary 
of State during the Civil War. He was 
acting Secretary of State during his fa- 
ther's illness. One day in the Captain's 
room Mr. Frederick Seward related to a 
small group of us who had become ac- 
quainted with him a number of interesting 
stories about the closing months of Lin- 
coln's administration. 

There was a certain measure in which 
the President believed strongly. He 
brought it one afternoon into a Cabinet 
meeting. He found that his Secretaries, 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 53 

to the last man, were all strongly op- 
posed to it. He spent considerable time 
explaining it and seeking to bring them to 
his way of thinking, but apparently with- 
out much effect. The time came, how- 
ever, when a vote must be taken as other 
business had to be transacted. Lincoln 
put the motion: ^'All those in favor of this 
measure will say, Aye." The Secretaries 
sat there as silent and as well-behaved 
as a company of nuns at Vespers. ''All 
those who are opposed will say, No." 
Every man instantly voted a stout, loud, 
"No." There came a look of disappoint- 
ment in the President's face and then a 
twinkle in his eye. After a significant 
pause he remarked, ''The Ayes seem, to 
have it. The motion is carried." 

The very audacity of the man! The 
undaunted strength of his own conviction 
awed them rather than offended them. 
They looked at him, leaned back in their 
chairs and laughed and allowed the mo- 



54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

tion to be put down in the minutes as hav- 
ing been '^carried." It proved to be a 
wise measure and before the month had 
passed it won the hearty support of e very- 
man in the Cabinet. But I suppose Abra- 
ham Lincoln was the only man on earth 
who could have gotten that measure 
through that Cabinet that afternoon as 
having been carried. 

He knew what was in man and needed 
not that others should tell him. He knew 
where the cords of the human heart are 
and how he could play upon them to pro- 
duce the music he desired to hear. He 
knew how to phrase a statement in such 
a way as to make it carry. I suppose 
outside of the Scriptures and Shakespeare 
no writer or speaker has ever been so 
widely quoted here in the United States 
as Abraham Lincoln. 

As a leader of men he moved slowly, 
feeling his way at times rather than rush- 
ing ahead in pellmell fashion after the 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 55 

manner of ill-advised reformers. He kept 
ahead of the people, but not too far ahead. 
His method at this point has been finely 
indicated by Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

"Here was place for no fair weather 
sailor — the new pilot was called to the 
helm in a tornado. In four stormy years 
his endurance, his fertility of resource, 
his magnanimity were sorely tried and 
never found wanting. By his courage, his 
justice, his even temper, his fertile coun- 
sel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure 
in the center of a heroic epoch. He is the 
true history of the American people in his 
time. Step ^by step he walked before 
them, slow with their slowness, quicken- 
ing his march by theirs, the true represen- 
tative of this continent, an entirely public 
man, the father of his country, the pulse 
of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, 
the thought of their minds articulated by 
his tongue." 



56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

It requires study and reflection to ap- 
preciate adequately the true value of that 
type of leadership. History often ap- 
pears simple and easy to those who read 
it from some safe distance. We can see 
exactly what the great men ought to have 
done at every juncture and we can draw 
the appropriate moral. I fancy, however, 
that to the men who were making that his- 
tory the issues were not always so clear. 
For them it was not like steering one^s 
boat in broad daylight through a well- 
charted stream. 

We can turn back to-day and read the 
history of the Civil War with great peace 
of mind. Even in the darkest days we 
know that Appomattox, reconstruction 
and a reunited country are just ahead. 
We can come out into the open at any 
time by simply turning over a handful of 
leaves. But to Abraham Lincoln, who 
did not know of a surety that Appomattox 
and a reunited country were on the way, 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 57 

the making of all that history a day at a 
time, an hour at a time, an act at a time, 
and the acceptance of the full responsi- 
bility for his course, was quite another 
matter. I name, therefore, as the third 
element in his greatness, his power of 
holding himself close to the hearts of the 
people, whom he trusted and served, 
and of guiding them steadily in those 
lines of action which he desired them to 
take. 

The final element in his greatness which 
I would name was his political unselfish- 
ness and moral integrity. He was both 
great and good. The main issues with 
him were the preservation of the Union, 
the abolition of slavery, the welfare of the 
whole American people, rather than the 
success or the fame or the political ad- 
vancement of Abraham Lincoln. He de- 
sired not that he might save the country 
but that the country might be saved, let 



58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the credit for the achievement go where 
it would. 

He felt the full sense of his responsibil- 
ity in that tenure of office. The South 
had said in i860, ^'The election of Lincoln 
means secession." When Lincoln became 
President the Southern States, according 
to their threat, began to pass their Acts 
of Secession. Lincoln must have asked 
himself: ''Am I to end the line of Presi- 
dents of the United States? If so, what 
will be the verdict of history upon me? 
Or, on the other hand, am I to be that 
pivotal man upon whose wisdom and 
strength may turn the possibility of such 
a Union as we have never enjoyed to this 
hour?" It was enough to make any man 
self-conscious and to fill him with an un- 
due sense of his own importance. 

It was a time of political selfishness. 
Even the gravity of the situation did not 
shame the petty ambitions of smaller men. 
When we take up the account of some of 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 59 

the military heartburnings and squabbles 
of that day they make sorry reading for 
a patriot. There were men who seemed 
to be thinking more about the amount 
of gold on their shoulder straps than of 
the service they might render in the field, 
or the victories they might win for the 
flag. It is a mood which has not entirely 
passed. It only required two hours to 
fight the Battle of Santiago de Cuba in our 
Spanish War, but it took more than two 
years to settle the question as to whom 
the credit should be given, to Sampson 
or Schley. And the question has not been 
settled yet to everybody's satisfaction. 

It was not only in military and in naval 
life, but in political action as well, that 
men sometimes betrayed the quality of sel- 
fishness. Seward, Chase, Stanton, Gideon 
Welles, and almost every other man of the 
period seemed at times to have his own 
little ax to grind whenever the public 
grindstone was not otherwise engaged — 



6o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and sometimes, alas, when it was. Among 
them all Lincoln bore himself steadily in 
the spirit of absolute disinterestedness. 

He was a man of great simplicity and 
humility of mind. When some Secretary 
would resign in a fit of resentment, Lin- 
coln would take the letter, put on his hat 
and go down to the Secretary's home. 
He would say to him in friendly fashion: 
"The public interest does not admit of my 
accepting your resignation at this time. I 
have come to beg you to retain your port- 
folio." 

When I think of this quality of his 
character I am always reminded of a 
certain story. It is a story which I enjoy 
all the more because it was told originally 
by a brother minister whose face was as 
black as my Sunday coat. I refer to the 
Rev. John Jasper, who for many years 
was pastor of a large colored Baptist 
Church in the city of Richmond, Vir- 
ginia. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 6i 

John Jasper had not enjoyed many edu- 
cational advantages in his early life, but 
he was a shrewd negro. He saw that the 
colored men in Richmond were being used 
by the designing politicians in their own 
interests. Before the election the candi- 
dates for office would go about addressing 
their '^colored constituents" and making 
all manner of promises as to what would 
be done for the negro race if only these 
particular gentlemen were chosen to office. 
But when they were once safely elected 
not one of them could see a colored man 
across the street. 

On the Sunday night before the city 
election, Mr. Jasper preached a sermon 
on the political outlook and in the course 
of that sermon he told this story: 

"Brethren, the other night I had a 
dream. I dreamed that I was dead. I 
went to heaven, but I found it a long way 
from Richmond, Virginia, to heaven. I 
toiled along through the brush and the 



62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

briers and over the rocks until at last, 
through much tribulation, I reached the 
Gate of Heaven. 

^'I knocked and St. Peter said, 'Who's 
theah?' 

'' 'The Rev. John Jasper, Richmond, 
Virginia.' 

'' 'Is you a-horseback or a- foot?' 

" 'I'se a-foot, Sah.' 

" 'Then you cahn't come in heah — no 
man can come in heah except he's a'horse- 
back.' " 

Mr. Jasper said that he felt profoundly 
disappointed. He had been striving to 
live a consistent, Christian life for many 
years. He had been preaching the Gospel 
of his blessed Lord with such ability as he 
possessed and now to be told that he could 
not be admitted to heaven because he had 
come on foot seemed harsh. He believed, 
however, in the perseverance of the saints 
and he started back to earth to get a 
horse that he might come up properly. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 63 

Again he toiled along through the brush 
and the briers and over the rocks until, 
about half way down to the earth, he met 
General Mahone. 

"Why, Gineral," he said, "is you dead, 
too? Whar you gwine?" 

The General informed him that he was 
on the way to heaven. Then John Jasper 
explained that he would not be admitted 
because he was on foot. The two men 
stood there on the path discussing the 
matter until presently General Mahone 
said: "Now John, I'll tell you what we 
will do. You get down on your hands 
and knees and I'll get on your back. Then 
I'll ride you up to the Gate of Heaven. 
When St. Peter asks me if I am on horse- 
back or on foot, I'll tell him I am on 
horseback. Then I'll ride you in and 
there we'll be." 

This seemed like an admirable arrange- 
ment, and John Jasper, according to his 
dream, meekly got down on his hands and 



64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

knees and took General Mahone on his 
back. Then once more he toiled along 
through the brush and the briers and over 
the rocks until again he was at the Gate 
of Heaven. 

General Mahone knocked and St. Peter 
said: "Who's there?" 

"General Mahone, Richmond, Vir- 
ginia." 

"Is you a-horseback or a-foot?" 

"I'se a-horseback, Sir." 

"All right, General," replied St. Peter, 
"hitch your horse outside and walk right 
in." 

I do not need to make the application 
as John Jasper made it that night to his 
colored congregation. I tell the story as 
illustrating a quality which I fear has not 
entirely disappeared from some of our 
present-day politicians. There are still 
men in every community who like to have 
the public get down on all fours that these 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 65 

aspirants for office may ride them for their 
own advantage. 

I tell this story as illustrating a quality 
of which not one shred can be found in 
the make-up of Abraham Lincoln. He 
had no desire that the American people 
should get down on all fours that he might 
ride them for his own advantage. He 
desired rather than he might take upon 
himself the form of a servant and stoop 
down in patient fashion to minister to 
their welfare. He lived in the spirit of 
that Book which John Hay, his Secretary, 
tells us lay always on his desk — a book 
in which he was accustomed to read every 
day. The Book says: ''He that saveth his 
life shall lose it. But he that loseth his 
Hfe for my sake shall find it." Lincoln 
found himself; he found his place in the 
hearts of his countrymen; and he found 
his secure niche in the Temple of Fame 
because he lived and died to serve. He 



66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

was a man of moral integrity and of sub- 
lime unselfishness. 

How warm were his sympathies with 
the suffering and how delicately he could 
phrase them upon occasion! Read this 
letter written to Mrs. Byxbee, the mother 
of the five sons who had given their lives 
to the cause of the Union: 

"I have been shown in the files of the 
War Department a statement that you 
are the mother of five sons who have died 
gloriously on the field of battle. I feel 
how weak and fruitless must be any words 
of mine which should attempt to beguile 
you from your grief for a loss so over- 
whelming. But I cannot refrain from ten- 
dering to you the consolation which may 
be found in the thanks of the Republic 
they died to save. I pray that our Heav- 
enly Father may assuage the anguish of 
your bereavement and leave you only the 
cherished memory of the loved and the 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 67 

lost, and the solemn pride that must be 
yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice 
upon the altar of freedom." 

How deeply religious the man was in 
all the essential attitudes of his spirit! 
His closing words in the Second Inaugural 
might, in their sweep and finish, in their 
moral tone and their spiritual insight, 
have come from one of the greatest of 
the old Hebrew prophets. 

'Tondly do we hope, fervently do we 
pray, that this mighty scourge of war may 
speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that 
it continue until all the wealth piled by 
the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty 
years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
and until every drop of blood drawn with 
the lash shall be paid with another drawn 
by the sword, as was said three thousand 
years ago, so still it must be said, 'the 
judgments of the Lord are true and righte- 
ous altogether.' 



68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

^With malice toward none, with charity 
for all, with firmness in the right as God 
gives us to see the right — let us strive on 
to finish the work we are in; to bind up 
the nation's wounds; to care for him who 
shall have borne the battle and for his 
widow and his orphan; to do all which 
may achieve and cherish a just and lasting 
peace among ourselves, and with all i na- 
tions." 

In discussing these elements of Lin- 
coln's greatness I have not paused at each 
point to make comparison between him 
and the other great men of that period. 
He would easily bear comparison with the 
greatest men of the century. Napoleon 
was a great man and a large part of his 
life came in the Nineteenth Century. But 
the growing verdict upon him is that he 
was selfish, cruel, and in his domestic re- 
lations absolutely heartless. Lincoln was 
as 1 tender-hearted as a woman. Goethe 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 69 

was a great writer, — I believe the greatest 
writer of the Nineteenth Century, — but 
his private life was not clean. His warm- 
est admirers are compelled to » apologize 
for certain phases of his conduct and char- 
acter. Lincoln's life was clean — the 
American people will never have to blush 
for Abraham Lincoln. Darwin and Spen- 
cer were great men, but great chiefly be- 
cause of their association with a certain 
idea, the idea of organic evolution which 
was about to be announced by another 
investigator, Wallace. The greatness lay 
in the idea rather than in the personali- 
ties of these two men. Somehow Lincoln 
combined the intellectual, .the administra- 
tive, and the moral in such a degree that 
nowhere in the Nineteenth Century do I 
find any other man so truly great. 

His combination of lofty idealism with 
practical sagacity in bringing things to 
pass; his ability to comprehend and in 
the end to utilize men of extreme views 



70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

by keeping to the front the deeper under- 
lying principles and the main issues; his 
power of holding himself close to the 
hearts of the people in sympathetic fash- 
ion and yet of guiding them steadily and 
wisely in those lines of action he desired 
them to take; his political unselfishness 
and moral integrity — he invested these 
fine qualities in a momentous period of 
our nation's history and in the light of 
what he was and of what he did I am led 
to ascribe to him more of personal great- 
ness and of abiding usefulness than be- 
longs to any other man of the Nineteenth 
Century. 

In this discussion I have tried to free 
my mind altogether from any partisan 
feeling or sectional prejudice or personal 
bias. I ought to be able to do this very 
readily. I come from the other side of 
Mason and Dixon's line — I was born in 
the old state of Virginia. My father be-* 
lieved in the Union, but his father, my 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 71 

grandfather, sympathized fully with the 
slaveholders and believed in the principles 
of the Confederacy as long as he lived. 
Some of my earliest recollections as a 
child are of seeing that aged grandfather 
as he sat reading Pollard's ''Lost Cause," 
one of the favorite Southern histories of 
the Confederacy in that day. I have seen 
the tears stream down his cheeks over 
what had been to him the greatest disap- 
pointment of his life, the failure of the 
Southern Confederacy. I remember how 
there hung in his bedroom up to the day 
of his death that picture which is so well 
known throughout the South, the picture 
of General Robert E. Lee at the grave of 
"Stonewall" Jackson. 

It was into that family and into the 
midst of those sentiments and traditions 
that I was born. In the family gather- 
ings during my childhood I heard the 
events of recent history discussed froni 
a point of view far removed from that 



72 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

held by anyone who may read this book. 
But when I became old enough to read 
history for myself and to think and to 
compare, I came gradually to believe that 
the greatest man in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury, and one of the greatest men in all 
the centuries, was that same Abraham 
Lincoln who defeated the desires of my 
Southern ancestors and kept all our stars 
together in one common field of blue. 

The great humanity of the man! How 
it has touched the heart of the whole 
world. North, South, East, and West! I 
have given this address in Tennessee, 
meeting with the same response there that 
I have enjoyed in Massachusetts, in Iowa, 
or in California. The great humanity of 
the man had begun to touch the heart of 
the whole world at the time of his death. 
In those strange sad days of April, 1865, 
wherever men had learned to read, the 
feeling was that the human race had lost a 
friend. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 73 

Queen Victoria, departing from the 
stately etiquette of her English Court, 
wrote out with her own right hand a mes- 
sage of condolence to Mrs. Lincoln: ^'As 
a widow to a widow, I write," she said, 
thinking of her own bereavement in the 
death of the good Prince Albert. This 
was the feeling at one end of the social 
scale. And away down at the other end 
there grew up among some of the sim- 
ple, untutored, superstitious people who 
lived in a certain community not far from 
Springfield, Illinois, this tradition which 
persisted for decades — they said that the 
brown thrushes in the hedges out there 
did not sing for a whole year after Lin- 
coln was shot. The great humanity of the 
man was touching the heart of the whole 
world. 

Now in closing may I suggest a certain 
parallel! I do it with the utmost rever- 
ence, and I trust, without the slightest 
offense to the religious sentiments of any- 



74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

one who may read these lines. I am not 
instituting a comparison, but I would sug- 
gest a certain parallel between the life of 
the greatest man of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury and the life of the Greatest of all 
the Centuries, the Son of Man. 

Both were of humble birth. God makes 
his great ones from the dust of the ground, 
breathing into their nostrils the breath of 
his own mighty life as they become living 
souls. 

Lincoln's birthplace was a log cabin 
and Jesus was born in the manger of a 
stable. 

Lincoln's father was a carpenter by 
trade and Jesus is referred to in the Gos- 
pels as ''the son of the carpenter." 

The words which Jesus used in his 
opening address there in the synagogue 
at Nazareth might have been incorporated 
bodily into Lincoln's First Inaugural. 
"The spirit of the Lord is upon me be- 
cause He has anointed me to preach good 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 75 

tidings to the poor. He has sent me to 
bind up the broken-hearted, to preach de- 
liverance to the captives, and to set at 
liberty them that are bruised." 

Both Lincoln and Jesus were lovers and 
users of the story, the parable, the homely 
saying which the common people would 
hear gladly and readily carry away in 
their minds. 

Both Lincoln and Jesus were hindered 
in their work by the moral extremists and 
bigots on the one hand and by the moral 
dullards and slow of heart to believe the 
good things God had in store for the peo- 
ple, on the other. 

Of Lincoln's personal appearance it 
might have been said as it was said of 
the promised Messiah: ^'There is no form 
nor comeliness in him that we should de- 
sire him." 

The characteristic gravity of Lincoln's 
face and the sadness which sat upon him 
almost overpoweringly during his years in 



76 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the White House, how it reminds us inces- 
santly of the One who was called "A Man 
of Sorrows and acquainted with grief." 

And to complete that significant paral- 
lel, you will all remember that it was on 
Good Friday, the anniversary of the 
Crucifixion of the Savior of Mankind, that 
Lincoln met his death. It would seem 
as if somehow in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury as in the First, there could be no re- 
mission of the dreadful sin of slavery 
without the shedding of blood and the 
most precious blood we had. 

What a strange suggestive parallel! It 
seems no accident that the American Lin- 
coln bore the Hebrew name of Abraham, 
Father of the Faithful in whose work for 
righteousness all the nations of the earth 
have been blessed. It seems no accident 
that when Lincoln entered the city of 
Richmond near the close of his life, as 
Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem in the 
last week of his earthly life, the colored 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 77 

people of Richmond were almost ready 
to fall down and hail him as a kind of 
second Messiah to their race. He surely 
marks one of the highest reaches of that 
Christian civilization which the coming of 
the Son of Man made possible. 

In that Convention of 1864 which re- 
nominated Lincoln the long nominating 
speeches which we know to-day had not 
come into vogue. When the time came 
for the presentation of the names of can- 
didates, the Chairman of the Illinois 
Delegation stood up and without coming 
forward, said this: 'The people of the 
State of Illinois present to the people of 
the United States as candidate for the 
Presidency the name of Abraham Lincoln 
— God bless him!'' Then he sat down. 
I would present to you as candidate for 
the place of highest honor in the Nine- 
teenth Century, the name of Abraham 
Lincoln — God bless him! 



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